Member Articles

Enjoy our extensive collection of member-contributed articles to learn how other Scrum practitioners use Scrum in the workplace.

Read about the experiences and ideas of Agile colleagues around the world, and share your own thoughts here. You can also visit Spotlight, which features blogs by experts in the fields of Scrum, Agile, and the broader business world.

Opinions represent those of the authors and not of Scrum Alliance. The sharing of member-contributed content on this site does not imply endorsement of specific Scrum methods or practices beyond those taught by Scrum Alliance Certified Trainers and Coaches.

There are typical mistakes that disrupt a Scrum team, preventing them from reaching their best level of performance. Because they don't always surface early on, they are difficult to prevent and even to detect. I keep this list of mistakes written down so that my teams can better avoid them.

In most Agile coaching projects, we find that our client applications are not properly covered with automated tests. The organization usually has no plans to throw away those codebases and start from scratch, which means we need to address the evergreen issue of quality in the legacy code.

When transitioning to Agile (or any new process), it is crucial to create energy across all teams by encouraging and empowering collaboration among them. Here are further strategies to overcome the struggles experienced during the transformation.

My first encounter with Agile was in 2009, when I was given the role of Agile project manager. "What is Agile?" I asked myself, my supervisor, and pretty much everyone around me. The answers that I got varied widely, and my adventure began.

When companies try to implement Agile, they often make key mistakes at the start. The implementation's failure then conveniently gets blamed on the Agile framework or the coaches. Here are the three steps you can take to start a transformation the right way.

I have uses and adapted a number of different styles of retrospectives with my teams. I have always tried to include an element of fun to ensure that everyone is engaged with the process and that it is not seen as "just another meeting."

I used to wish I had a perfect definition of Agile — a quick, to-the-point elevator statement I could carry around with me. Then, a few months ago, an event triggered an idea, ultimately curing this predicament.

Many organizations in today’s marketplace run on legacy systems, which brings a new set of challenges to consultants and IT professionals trying to bring about a change in an organization’s operations.